I. INAUGURAL ADDRESS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.1 EVERY teacher to whom is entrusted some special branch of University work must feel a deep sense of responsibility as regards the relation he holds both to his subject and to those whose studies in it he is to direct. It devolves upon him, by his own activity as a teacher and as a learner, to maintain as a vital influence in the microcosm of letters the branch of human culture entrusted to him. It is his privilege, a privilege not without its heavy burdens, to share in giving to others what Plato wisely calls "the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have," education of the soul. In the latter respect, in the relation in which he stands to his students, he who undertakes, I will not say to teach philosophy but to aid in drawing forth and stimulating the power of thinking philosophically, seems to me to have very special responsibilities. No other subject in the academical curriculum touches so many of the deepest interests of humanity, or touches them so intimately; no other subject is adapted to produce so fundamental a change in the culture of the individual mind. It may be deemed by us a pious exaggeration of the good Bishop 1 [On entering upon the professorship of Logic and Rhetoric, 21st October 1895.]* Berkeley when he declared that "whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earth-worm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman"; but the more temperate conclusion can hardly be avoided that the difficulties and perplexities with which reflexion on human life in any of its aspects is confronted, lead back when thoroughly followed to questions of the ultimate kind we call 'phil- . osophical,' and that so, for good or for evil, he who has once breathed the free, if rarefied, atmosphere of speculation must have his views on all the permanent interests of humanity profoundly affected. While, then, I feel keenly the responsibility resting on me, I take comfort in two reflexions. The one, of minor and merely personal significance, that the auditors in whose company I shall have to wade through the ocean of words' constituting the medium of philosophical analysis will assuredly extend their cordial sympathy to a singleminded effort to reach the truth, and so far as possible to express it. The other, that he who has the privilege of lecturing on philosophy in a Scottish University may reckon upon the lively interest in the subject and the predisposition to prosecute inquiries in it which seem to be the natural heritage of the Scottish mind. With these considerations in mind, I have thought not only that I might venture, but that it was in a measure incumbent upon me to devote this opening lecture of the course to a general treatment such as might indicate, broadly, the method and principles by which the main topics of theoretical philosophy may be fruitfully handled. A general treatment of the kind has its own difficulties and dangers, and it is with great diffidence that I venture to connect it with a survey of the present position of philosophical questions. |